Crowley cocked his head sideways. “Tell me. Did you really think this trick would work with me?”
A bolt set off from the Armor and hit Dagger. He felt himself shot through the glass panels.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
After the fourth glass rain he slid with his back on the sharp tears, his skin covered with deep cuts. He stood up, feeling the blood run down his body in long, warm streams. “You know I can’t die, don’t you?”
The metal shattered the glass. Among the fossil trunks, Crowley advanced with the pace of someone who is not particularly willing to talk.
Dagger welcomed him. Solitude greeted the long scimitar with a crystal clear thrill. Soon the blades, arms and armors joined in a deadly ballet.
Crowley broke the boy’s guard and grabbed his throat with a clenched metal hand to slam him against a petrified tree, and then against a glass panel, cold fingers digging into his flesh.
Dagger put his free hand on the Armor’s bracer, struggling to breathe. He squeezed his eyes without closing them, and saw the shock generated by the mayem. He found himself on the ground again in a sea of light and pain.
The Pendracon who stubbornly refused to die tightened the hilt of his scimitar. Dagger saw it catch fire, flames so alive that the Armor itself seemed to burn together with the remaining glass walls. “Did you see? I made some progress. That damn white blood shouldn’t have put me back into this Armor.”
Dagger smiled. You want hellfire? Okay, bitch. I’ll give you hellfire. He closed his eyes. Here. Come here to me!
He heard a voice coming from the inside, Are you still blind to the world within you, waiting to be born?
Konkra grinned in and out of himself. No more, my friend of misery.
Then break these chains and I’ll fall into reality. Open the doors, my master and parasite. Open the gates of this purgatory to burn the face of all your fears.
He was Dagger no more, and maybe he had never been. His short human parenthesis was overwhelmed by the vibration of the infinity, and everything disappeared—the useless limits of perception, the fossil forest, and Crowley; the light and the world under his feet; the illusion of happiness, and that of pain.
Somewhere in the chaotic guts of nothingness, death became a generating mother, but Mumakil’s voice warned him, What will you do when no one will save you from yourself?
He tried to react. He tried to understand the limits of that immensity to drive it back into the tiny shell from which it had escaped, but it was too late. The jackal stared at him one last time with his bright, mad eyes, before breaking the bars and striking from the cage. The last thing Dag remembered was a single instant in which all the pain of the world was enclosed. Then the chains regained control of reality and he was looking again into the world of the dying.
The fossil forest was shattered, the rocky vault broken to welcome once again the light of the sky, albeit filtered by a thick smoke. Glass lay all around and some fragments were pretty big. At his feet, Khalifa stared at him with accusing eyes as the white tentacles snaked in the dust, caressing his still face.
Dagger stood up in a circle of black and burnt earth—what remained of Crowley. He lifted some of the thick, oily ash, which slipped between his fingers. “Is this your retribution, when you become a tool in the hands of a god?”
Among the Armor’s pieces, which were intact and lay all around, an old, dismembered skeleton seemed to have found its lost peace. It was covered by mummified skin and meat. The hand was still tightened around the hvis scimitar.
Dag screamed when he saw the remains trying to stand up on the maimed limbs and trudge toward him. He gripped Solitude again, but a familiar voice stopped him. Look at what remains of a man. Look at what remains of his need to be eternal.
“Hanoi?”
No. I’m the master of my parasite. The appendages sprang up everywhere around Crowley, wrapping his chest, head and neck, as the voice continued, Thank you for pulling him out of that Armor. Thank you for pulling him out of his blasphemous refuge.
The bony and necrotic jaws of the Divine opened, but no verse came out except the viscid lament of the tentacles which dragged him down in the earth, eternal burial of the fallen Pendracon. His skull turned unnaturally and the one, purulent eye looked for the last time at the world of the mortals, before returning dust to dust.
There was a silence so deep and absolute that no desert had ever known.
Dagger fell to his knees, hammering his fists to the ground. His own emotions were incomprehensible to him in front of the miserable end of Crowley. “Is death the only release?”
A cold wind swept the yellowish smoke.
It’s his breath, Dag thought, and Hanoi emerged from nowhere. The huge, dark profile of the crab stood out above the ruins of the ruins in the river bed, perfectly below the arch of amorphis. He was inanimate, his eyes a dull blue color. His silence terrified Dagger more than all the visionary words exchanged with him during his dreams.
A shadow appeared, standing on the edge of the carapace. His beard was the first thing Dagger recognized.
The Armor’s helm, said the voice which Dagger this time identified as that of Khalifa. Bring it to me now that the giant is sleeping. The soul of men and gods may be in their hearts, but their memory is in their heads. That was all he said, before disappearing.
Dagger looked at the mayem helm at his feet.
As expected, the metal came to life when he touched it. It’s my soul that animates it.
He picked it up, holding it to his side as he climbed mounds of debris. The Gorgors had fled, leaving him alone in an orgy of silence, a conspiracy of peace.
When he reached the crab, his mouth opened jerkily in a mechanic movement. Somebody was inviting him to come back inside.
Dagger stopped on the unusual threshold and the wind blew cold from that black, boundless desert. The belly of the beast was completely dark, now. “Hello?” he shouted inside. Only after doing that did he realize how stupid it was to expect an answer.
Which came anyway: The helm. Wear it, said the voice inside every slimy filament before him. Don’t fear the last step, or your desperate need to stay alive will kill you. What you are is your strongest weapon, your only ally, the faithful traitor who will never abandon you. Only through us you will reach him.
Dagger lifted the metal face of Ktisis. A cold light slid along its cruel eyes and prominent cheekbones, descending into two bright lines along the sharp fangs.
How does it feel? the voice asked. How does it feel to be the cause of all evils in the world? Come to us, you’ll be in good company. Here we’ve all desired the end, and we won’t judge you. Come. It’s quiet in here.
Dag lifted the helm and put it on his head. The metal shaped itself on his face, becoming so light that it seemed to disappear. The layer of mayem in front of his eyes faded and his gaze became that of Ktisis.
What’s under the arch!?
The eyes of the night opened and the mirror appeared before him. It was unreachable and reflected the lights of a world too far to be real.
You see it, you recognize it now. That’s the light at the end of the world.
Reality flowed like crystal water between his helpless fingers, and everything disappeared in a comfortable obscurity.
* * * * *
The shadow appears at the end of the tunnel and seems to invite you with its silence.
You cross the first of the three arches, and this time it doesn’t push you back.
Swollen veins wrap you arms like creepers as you walk into the infinite darkness. The jackal god stands against the horizon and yells his pain against a miserable sky. You feel in your heart and throat the explosive void he is forced to hold inside. It’s unbearable.
“They don’t know what it means.” You watch the long claws on your hands. “To stay nailed here, on this altar.”
The jackal lowers his colossal face and stares into space. He’s heard you beyond the barrier inside himself, and he�
�s not yelling anymore.
Faceless shadows observe you from beyond the black mirrors which flank the path, and they all laugh about you two. They move a step forward.
A bark carries them away.
Something has broken, or adjusted, when you wore the Armor and crossed the first arch. Something is no more as it used to be. In the silence that follows, some words are repeated constantly in your mind, “We’re the creators, we who feel. We are the guardians of the All.” Now you don’t know if those are your thoughts or his. “We’re the keepers. We’re the guardians.”
“Face who you are,” a voice says from your right, while another one answers from your left, “What you can’t be, not anymore.”
The shadow is approaching, now, just like you are marching toward him. He wants to talk to you, you know that. He’s tired, too, of that silence and he’s happy to have seen you move the first step.
When you reach him, you realize the shadow is your reflection in a mirror. The shadow you could never reach has always been you.
The shadow disappears in the silence to which he belongs. Two children appear in his stead, lying on a rough wooden floor. They are alone in the heart of horror and sleep hugged to each other to exorcise the fears of the night.
You reach your hand in the desperate attempt to touch your violated memory, but the mirror opposes its cold resistance.
“Seeth.”
The shadows laugh about you. “What you can’t be anymore. Important for someone!” The shadows laugh and laugh.
Hatred grows, and pain, and grudge. They can’t understand. They were not there with you as it all happened. You look for the hilt of Solitude, but you can’t find it. Abandoned by your last ally, you turn toward the thickest mysteries of the dark. You see the wide shadow of the jackal projected against the stars at your feet, blacker than the obscurity which dominates everything. Collapsed columns lie decomposed in the emptiness, wounded beasts of a world overwhelmed by the wind of change that has taken away everything with it.
You remember it.
You scream louder than the yells in your mind, you bring your hands to your temples. They are clawed. Your twelve fingers are long and with four phalanges each. You’re bursting.
The light is the dark.
“Here! He’s waking up.”
“The dark is the light. I’m nearly there.”
“In the mirror, before he knows it! He doesn’t want us here.”
For a moment you feel nostalgia and a hint of betrayed hopes, when the bark splits the cosmic delirium again.
You throw yourself against the mirror, which shatters in a thousand faces, a thousand fears that no longer exist.
Your sterile memory sinks into a deeper past which you are not given to know. A wolf in the ruins is howling your name. Infinite red eyes open in the void. They are still spying, waiting, quivering. They want you, only you. Your heart beats. You’re scared.
The steps ascending to nowhere appear under your frenetic feet. You’re climbing them since always, as all around you the emptiness cries out its silent rage.
It’s a dream of mirrors. Lost in a paradox, you’re not here.
You reach the top of the stairs and the colonnade opens before your eyes. You can see the second arch from there, in the distance.
You walk around a labyrinth of narrow channels on the ground, arranged to form an octagon with a fountain in the middle, a perfect sphere which emits three water jets.
A Gorgor sits on the throne at the far end. Three immense and very high metal columns, arranged in a pyramid, prevent the void from collapsing onto him. His skin is dark and he wears a white robe with a hood pulled on his head. You don’t know how long he’s been there. A short white beard runs along his jaws and joins under his nose, leaving his chin uncovered.
You hear him talking to himself, “For years I’ve tried to teach them, but their eyes were empty. For them I died. A sad and doomed race, in a hopeless desert.”
“I know you.”
The Gorgor jumps on his feet. “Who are you? How did you get here?!” he yells. “They are mine, all mine. You can’t take them away from me!”
He thought he was alone, like all the buried memories.
You walk forward and realize that he can’t see you. He’s blind, his face wrecked by a deep scar crossing his eyes.
“Khalifa. Apostate king of Adramelech.”
The candid figure relaxes. “That name,” he says as he sits down again. “My name.” He turns around, as if you were just a voice suspended in mid air. “I haven’t heard it in a while. Yes, my name is Khalifa, and I’ve been sitting here a long, long time.”
‘He doesn’t remember he’s dead,’ you think. “Where are we?”
“This? This is the Twilight Hall, but we’re not here.”
You approach.
“I am the last one left of a people that no longer exists. Now they live only in my memory. My people, lost forever.” The old lips of the nightmare bend into a smile. “You’ve come, in the end. I must have invited you, it’s just that…I don’t remember. Here everything is frail like a rainbow in the dark. Distant lives, places and fears melt together, and sometimes it’s hard to understand where you begin and where they end.”
“Are you the one who called that crab in this world?”
“Don’t call him crab. That’s nothing but a shell belonging to ancient times, gone forever.” He’s silent for a while. “I hid Hanoi in that creature. Only its exoskeleton could hold the negative energy of the anti-god when I called him here to free the world from Skyrgal.”
“And then you hid yourself inside it when life took its toll.”
Khalifa the Apostate darkens. Maybe he’s remembering. “Angra saved the world once again,” he continued. “He had sworn he would never interfere in the affairs of mortals.”
“Unless a mortal had evoked an anti-god to take care of the lord of Destruction. Unless a mortal had interfered in the affairs of the gods. I think that’s always been the limit.”
The Gorgor doesn’t answer.
“Did you ever have an enemy, Khali?”
“No. Don’t call me that.”
“This is the way enemies work. They are ours, only ours,” you continue. “No one should take away from us the privilege to make them suffer. Revenge is a serious business. Someone cares for his enemies more than for his friends.”
“Are you like that, too?”
You stop. “I…don’t know. Ianka was like that, and Warren…oh, he certainly was, though sometimes I think he’s the only enemy of himself.” You walk on. “That’s why we just kind of jelled.”
“Life is an illusion, my boy. Always be wary of their hopeful eyes looking at you. One day they’ll be gone, leaving you alone with this hatred which will be totally useless to you.”
“I’m different.”
“You,” Khalifa says. “You are nothing. You, too, are just the shell of something that is gone, lost forever. You talked with him, didn’t you?”
You try to shake your head.
“Who knows what he told you,” Khalifa wonders. “Hanoi doesn’t speak with me anymore. Maybe he got bored and chose a new playmate, who can say? He will do that with you too when you’re not necessary to him anymore, like all those who have replaced me. Hanoi is ancient, and his skin is old.”
You move some steps around. The shadows move away. Now they look scared. “And who am I? Who am I for real?”
“Didn’t they give you the explanations?”
“Of course. And the more they explained, the more I felt like I was getting away from the light. I was a Spider in Melekesh, I was important for a lot of people who are gone. They have gone with the current, and now I’m in the belly of a crab talking with the shadow of a creature which shouldn’t even be anymore. It’s this kind of explanation that I have to deal with, usually.”
“Look at the emptiness around you. This is what you are dying for. You too have found something that you loved more than yourself, a
nd you let it kill you. This is always your first and last recollection.”
It comes back to your mind, now. It’s part of your memory, at least you’re sure before that thought slips between your fingers dissolving into ash. ‘No!’
Khalifa finally opens his eyes. They are white and expressionless, cold as ice, the irregular irises divided in two by the scar crossing his face. “Oh, here you are. The shadows were hiding you. It’s always been the shadows, but you took a step toward yourself and they took one back.” Khalifa is not smiling anymore. “You won’t be able to face any of them if you don’t first face yourself. That’s the most terrible beast, the only one that can drag you down deeper and deeper in the abysses of your mind. The first step is the most important one, but it’s only the first, in the end.”
You walk slowly forward and the shadows around you do the same, hidden beyond the columns. “Why do you want to help me?”
“Revenge.” Khalifa stares at you. “Now that you are here, I know it. We’re fighting a common enemy, that god of Destruction that was the cause of all our evil. And then…” The Apostate smiles. “I’ve got some sort of thorn in my side, that’s been haunting me for some time.”
A lightning burns the sky enclosed beyond the arch. You recognize the black silhouette of Olem—you would recognize that even in the middle of hell. Then darkness falls like a curtain on the ancient dreams.
“I’m just a poor blind man appointed to open your eyes. And the light of the blind is the only one with which you’ll see the bottom of this den. The eyes of the memory are opening, you see?”
Again that recollection. It’s about to slip through your fingers. You stretched out your hand. “The fall from grace,” you whisper. Now your voice is ethereal, a deep and barely audible vibration inside everything. ‘It’s the voice of Konkra,’ you think, and you’re scared. “I had nothing. Then I had everything. And then I had nothing once again. It was her, right?”
The eyes of Khalifa open wider, the gaze of a madman opened on the interior world. He hisses, “Yes.”
“Who is she? She watches over me at every step I take, I know, she’s always there.” You stop. “But as soon as I turn around, she’s already gone.”
The Tankar Dawn Page 16